Poetry Expo 26
/ 6 February 2026
Strophes Save Spaces
DIY poetry in urban ecosystems
Poetry Expo 2026
The project of the WSR Collective – “STROPHES SAVE SPACES” – is centred around poetry in urban and post-urban relations as a means to remember, repair, care and stay resilient. Currently, half of the world population lives in cities, but cities are also archives of loss and isolation. They make us aware of poetry in living metropolises where we need to counter anonymity and loneliness.
Through a gathered collection of poems authored by members of the WSR Collective, we aim to create poetic infrastructures - symbolically and physically. Sharing poems through various DIY paper “transport means” (e.g. paper-planes) opens ways to create a common universe and to save the space around us and between people. Paper travels easily through cities’ spaces, which is an allegory of the need for breathing and lightness in an urbanised world. The poems which “save spaces” metaphorise reimagining selfhood, listening to those left aside and healing those looking for relief.
We create tender and lyrical connections through taking poetry home as a tool to make visible emotions and heal relations, but also take care of memory and justice. You can be tender and make a paper plane with strophes to send it to your neighbour’s garden. You can make people remember through sticking tear-off strips with strophes at the bus stop. Strophes can travel between spaces, the internal landscape and vulnerable communities. Paper forms bring us back to the traditional, analogue way of building common spaces through poetry and turn our attention to space, which we also need to save and maintain resiliently (e.g. urban space devastated in wars, personal bonds, the green and trees).
Poems of the WSR Collective (in two versions: Polish and English) invite readers to use strophes to save spaces around them. Poems related to broadly imagined cities, urban and post-urban spaces are prepared in a format, which makes it possible to prepare e.g. DIY paper-plane, DIY announcement with paper-dashes to tear off (in Polish: “zrywki”) or DIY paper-collage. The format of the project also reflects the present and/or past, dispersed locations and homes of the members of the Collective - the cities in Poland, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the UK, the USA and Ireland.
Members of the WSR Collective:
Teodor Ajder, Aleksandra Bartelska, Monika Bistuła, Anna Borkowska, Britton Buckner, Paulina Janssen, Wikta Kłosińska, Agata Kordecka, Cezary Lewanowicz, Piotr Okniński
IG: @wspolnota_snow_rownoleglych
The project is part of the subtheme Poetic Infrastructures – Reclaiming Space, Building Commons.
Author
Wspólnota Snów Równoległych (Community of Parallel Dreams)
The poetic collective “Wspólnota Snów Równoległych” (“Community of Parallel Dreams") was established in 2022 as an informal, completely grassroots initiative in response to the need to share poetry. The joy of mutual inspiration unites us in writing.
We have been actively operating since October 2022, meeting online to work on texts and learn from each other. Over the last two years, the collective has held circa 30 meetings online. We write poems separately, but together we create a space for reading and listening to poetry, to discuss, share and spread our poems. The geographical dispersion of community members brings multinational and multicultural energy. Our poetic tropes are various, each of us looks for something of her/his own in words. However, we believe this diversity and confrontation with different poetics and means of expression is enriching, refreshing and new.
The collective also publishes its works, translations and essays, and its members participate in literature festivals, competitions and artistic projects. By delivering individual creativity, we co-create joint actions, exploring topics that are important to us.
Our previous projects:
MANIFESTO (May 2023)
Declaration of collective’s poetic vision, ideas and principles.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kOE_CKIW8DhG6opeuQPl3GS7M229KHCg/view?usp=drive_link
PRINT YOURSELF A POEM. PRINT YOURSELF A DREAM (November 2023)
Poetic happening as an element of the exhibition "Believe in Ghost". During the opening of the exhibition, we took part in a real distribution of dreams! The collective prepared a delicious menu with spiritological poems selected especially for this occasion. We enjoyed exquisite epitaphs (and more!) to the hypnotizing sound of a double bass. Simultaneously, the poems were printed live and could be taken home.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aEDRJbVBoxdgHSQiDKskC6KLROq7pJo-/view?usp=drive_link
ESTUARIUM - ESTUARY (April 2024)
The first paper chapbook of the collective (format A5+, notebook binding, 52 pages, 100 numbered copies).
It reflects the need and inevitability of artistic expression—for emotions, thoughts, words, and creativity. The river reference emphasizes the openness to different threads, which nevertheless meet in a common stream.
The whole notebook is divided into four parts. The parts "Springs" and "Accumulations" are a clasp that connects everything that will happen along the course of the river. The part "Maps" contains searching poems - these are searches for new meanings, discovering words, language experiments and journeys to specific places or imaginary spaces. The part "Mirrors" refers to the water surface, which is the boundary between what is visible, what is reflected in it, and what is hidden under the surface.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ijRBleD0dZBiFAa80rQqvCC5L-Am7Nfd/view?usp=drive_link
NARODZEŃSTWO - BIRTHHOOD (June — November 2024)
Participation in the exhibition "I Will Never Give Birth to My Mother" with the poetic project “Narodzeństwo”, tracing the process of becoming both a mother-creator and a daughter-creation.
We decided to talk about motherhood and daughterhood through close and distant associations, where beyond the human dimension, there appears a supernatural dimension. We wanted to speak in poems about creators and those created through a network of relationships - interpersonal, inter-born, inter-species, (im)material.
The set of poems “Narodzeństwo” has four parts: “Genes”, “Mothers and Grandmothers”, “Daughters” and “What Comes After Us”. We start with fragments of the genetic code, determinants in the creation process. Then we turn to the ancestors – their experiences recorded in our fingerprints, bodies and view of the present. In the third part, we put in the centre the figure of the mother in the creative process, in the cyclical becoming. The anthology ends with the fourth part, where we try to outline the future of the creators and the created.
In November 2024 we published the second paper chapbook of the collective, consisting of poems about “birthhood”.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a0XSz87SQLxxKX-bIQZ15ryxOi_L4Q5j/view?usp=drive_link
Members of the collective:
Teodor Ażder, Aleksandra Bartelska, Monika Bistuła, Anna Borkowska, Paulina Janssen, Wikta Kłosińska, Agata Kordecka, Cezary Lewanowicz, Piotr Okniński
IG: @wspolnota_snow_rownoleglych
